The scope of this discussion board can be very broad. Of course, it includes the somewhat thorny problem of trying to define exactly what life is, before you even have a benchmark against which you can measure an artificial form of life. In part, the discussion of artificial life might simply be thought of an extension of the AI discussions, but this would exclude new forms of engineered life based on biological DNA. At this point, the ethnical amongst you might start to recoil in horror at the thought of some Frankenstein monstrosity, but this might be prejudging the some future application out of context. However, such ideas will not sit comfortably with most present-day religions, but then such groups may even disagree with the secular goals of the World Transhumanist Association: